Page 153 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4

She wasn’t certain. But she was hardly going to bow down to his challenge. She hadn’tpunishedherself, even if she’d made some isolating decisions. She certainly wasn’t going to be so afraid of what she might have been doing to not reach out and try something new.

He’d challenged her, and that had tipped that tightwire between fear and excitement to ignoring fear if it meant meeting that challenge.

So she did the only thing that seemed to make sense in this stretched-out moment of touching each other, looking at each other,testingeach other. She pushed onto her toes and pressed her mouth to his.

Lightly. Perhaps the things raging through her were nowhere close tolight, but she thought he felt…fragile. Oh, he was a strong, impressive specimen of muscle and power, but under all that was something…delicate.

Perhaps the tiniest flicker of the humanity he was so determined to ignore. She wanted to fan it to life as much as she wanted to know what existed on the other side of all this physical want.

The kiss remained gentle, but she could feel the hard, dangerous outline of him against her abdomen. All that power chained back. It was intriguing, and there was a part of her that was curious what it would feel like unchained. What she was missing.

But a bigger part of her was afraid of the dangerous lines she was walking. She could admit that perhaps she, too, had hidden herself away in her grief, but she didn’t think that meant she needed to destroyeverythingjust because she wanted to meet a challenge.

Feel a tempting fire.

She eased back and forced herself to meet his gaze. She’d meet the challenge, even if she wasn’t quite ready to dive headfirst into the fire.

He looked down at her, ice in his eyes. But there was no ice inhim. Still, his words cut. “What the hell are you doing?”

Humiliation and hurt warred with insult. She did not look away. She refused to. If he didn’t know what she was doing, he hadn’t needed to kiss her back.Hewas the one caging her against this counter.Hewas the one who’d advanced.

“Do not play games, Diego,” she scolded lightly. “Not if you do not wish me to follow along.”

“Games,” he repeated, utter shock chasing across his face. “You think this is a game?” It was only then he seemed to realize he was still holding on to her. He stepped back, not exactly gracefully. It was more of a stumble, as if she’d stabbed him clean through.

“You are young and naive, colored by your father’s overly kind impression of me, I suppose. You have fooled yourself if you think there are…games being played here.” He straightened, scowled at her in a way she supposed was meant to be intimidating. “You haven’t a clue as to who I am, what I am, Amelia.”

It didn’t intimidate her at all. Mostly because the way he said it made her wonder ifheknew who he was.

She moved closer to him once again, reached out and fitted her hand to his cheek. “You could show me.”

For a moment, he was perfectly still. She didn’t even think he breathed. But she saw a fire leaping in his eyes that echoed in the pit of her stomach. Though hers remained while his was quickly banked.

“Oh, I could show you quite a bit,” he said darkly, moving away from her hand. “You have no idea the things I could show you.”

“Is that a promise?”

“It is a warning,tesoro. I would have expected your father to have taught you to heed a warning.”

With that, he turned on his heel and marched out of the kitchen, leaving her twisted up in a million knots. Shame and desire. Concern and a wistful yearning for recklessness. So many conflicting emotions, and part of her wanted to hide away from that. In all her life, her parents had always tried to protect her from that.

They had not argued in front of her, though her father had no doubt been angry about not knowing she existed for so many years. They’d treated each other with kindness, but Amelia hadsensedtheir bitterness toward each other, toward her mother’s illness, toward everything.

But she had been shielded. Just like in the Folliero home. She had been treated a bit like a…pet. Her father had kept her as hidden away as possible, unless Mrs. Folliero wanted to dress her up in Aurora’s hand-me-downs and insist she perform piano pieces for the family—which was only ever a jab at Aurora’s refusal to play. Meanwhile, Aurora had used Amelia’s company as somewhere to lodge all her complaints and make all her contempt for the family and its treatment of her known. And heard.

And Diego, much like his father, had never really acknowledged her at all.

All these people were gone now, except Diego. And Amelia was now the adult in the situation, not a child. She was the one in charge.

Now there was no one to shield her, and she had two choices. Continue to shield herself, hide away from life’s complexities. Just as her life had always been.

Or be the kind of woman who handled complex, and since the people who’d shielded her from so much haddied, it left the second the only true option.

What that meant for her and Diego, she did not yet know for sure. But she wasn’t about to bewarned away.

Diego was disgusted with himself. He had resisted, but not enough. He had endured pain, but it seemed to have no satisfaction.

Which was the point, he supposed. He stormed back to his bedchamber, his body a maze of different kinds of pains and thwarted desires.